Inductions: technical hitches

Another week of inductions done and it was certainly eventful.

Day one was spent helping with a couple of orientation events for other subjects; advertising some drop-in sessions for dissertation students; organising workshops/rooms for more courses in the Autumn term and answering emails from my Chartership mentees. My main aim was to clear my inbox because I knew that on day two I would be unable to check my email.

And on to day two - in my diary I had written "busiest day of year!". What I had forgotten to do was to find a four leaf clover; dig out my lucky charm and cross my fingers (and toes).

First up was a lecture for two hundred students. On arriving at the lecture theatre (early, in order to test and set up) I found that the projector was not working and there was no spare bulb available. After a discussion with the tutor we decided it was best to cancel the lecture - no slides, no internet and no other room to move to made achieving the aim of troubleshooting database problems rather tricky. So it was time to operate the back up plan - meaning that at some point in the next few weeks I shall have to talk to each of the 10 groups involved individually.

Next was the same lecture but for the other 200 students in the year. Projector working - check; students - check; me - check; microphones - no; dimmed lighting - no. I spent 45 minutes almost shouting at students who were mostly sat in darkness except for the light emitted from my PowerPoint slides. A tricky morning.

Then the afternoon. Three groups of 50 for a database searching workshop - oh and no access to the databases because the e-Library was having a tantrum. Another back up plan was unleashed - I talked about databases and why we use them etc; showed them some screencasts of their key databases and got them to ask me any question they wanted to about the library. The time passed but it certainly didn't give them hands-on searching practise which was my main aim - their timetables are so tight that I can't scheduled more workshop so this may come back to bite us later in the term.

As you can see from the previous three paragraphs it was a trying day where I was thwarted by technical hitches and glitches. It proved to be a long day and one that I am still trying to erase from my memory.

Day three was much improved - a bit of planning for a workshop to be delivered to the new PhD students; a couple of meetings with colleagues and two more tours.

Day 4 was back to workshops again - same workshop delivered four times. Only one technical hitch involving a very slow database - think it was using a card catalogue to search for its journal articles.

Final day saw another lecture and many questions about e-resources. They students did a lot of furious scribbling so hopefully they took away some hints and tips for their assignments. One more orientation tour and a tour for one student who had missed their slot meant my legs were very tired by 5pm.

A long, busy week featuring some hiccups but I still had lots of students say thank you for the advice/support supplied.

So that's four weeks done - only another 4 weeks to go until things get a little calmer (fingers crossed xx).